Anxious wait for transplant hopeful Sally-Anne

A MOTHER-of-two is tentatively awaiting a life-changing phone call which will let her know whether a desperately-needed kidney transplant can go ahead.

Over the next few days, Sally-Anne Grainger, from Swallowfields, Warndon Villages, will find out whether one of two potential donors are a suitable tissue match following hospital tests.

If successful, the 34-year-old and her donor could undergo surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham in two to three months time.

Both came forward to offer their kidneys to Miss Grainger after her desperate appeal made the front page of your Worcester News in January.

However, the university student said she was trying not to get too excited after hopes of a previous transplant with her friend Jonathan Povey were dashed at the eleventh hour.

Miss Grainger, who has cystic fibrosis and has undergone a double lung transplant, said: "To be honest, I am trying not to think about it [the transplant].

"If it it doesn't go ahead, I don't want to feel let down.

"I've got hope but I'm not thinking too hard about it in case I'm let down - particularly after what happened with Jonathan.

"Everything was fine, we were the perfect match but at the very last minute the transplant couldn't go ahead.

"I'm hopeful - where there is life, there is always hope - but I'm just not getting too excited."

One of the potential donors is the father of one of her eldest daughter's friends but she has been given no information about the second person.

A third person has been put on a reserve list.

The trio were among a number of kindhearted readers who were the same blood type as Miss Grainger and contacted the newspaper offering to undergo a transplant after reading about her plight.

If all three are ruled out, the search for a donor will have to begin again.

Miss Grainger suffered renal failure after having to take strong medication following her double lung transplant in March 2009.

At the time, she said she had been given a second lease of life but now feels like she is "barely existing" and has to have dialysis three times a week.

She is also anaemic and gets easily exhausted which is having a negative effect on her university work.

"I'm just really struggling with tiredness, I've been allowed to use mitigating circumstances for some of my essays but even trying to read a couple of pages of my text books can leave me exhausted."

Miss Grainger, mother to Kelsey, 14, and Megan, ten, decided to appeal for a donor in the paper after all her family and close friends were ruled out.

She said she was humbled by the huge response to the article and had been contacted by people from as far afield as America with offers of support.

"After the article appealed in the Worcester News I had quite a lot of people tell me they had been to their doctors to see if they would be suitable but had been told they weren't for a number of reasons.